Russ Feingold: “today I am reintroducing a measure that I sponsored in the 106th Congress to reduce the amount of federal irrigation…”

“today I am reintroducing a measure that I sponsored in the 106th Congress to reduce the amount of federal irrigation subsidies received by large agribusiness interests. I believe that reforming federal water pricing policy by reducing subsidies is important as a means to achieve our broader objectives of achieving a truly balanced budget. This legislation is also needed to curb fundamental abuses of reclamation law that cost the taxpayer millions of dollars every year. In 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt proposed legislation, which came to be known as the Reclamation Act of 1902, to encourage development of family farms throughout the western United States. The idea was to provide needed water for areas that were otherwise dry and give small farms--those no larger than 160 acres--a chance, with a helping hand from the federal government, to establish themselves. According to a 1996 General Accounting Office report, since the passage of the Reclamation Act, the federal government has spent $21.8 billion to construct 133 water projects in the west which provide water for irrigation. Irrigators, and other project beneficiaries, are required under the law to repay to the federal government their allocated share of the costs of constructing these projects. However, as a result of the subsidized financing provided by the federal government, some of the beneficiaries of federal water projects repay considerably less than their full share of these costs.”